Authorities were right to arrest bodega clerk Jose Alba — who stabbed a customer to death in a heated Harlem encounter — on murder charges, claim city lawyers hoping to get Alba’s wrongful arrest lawsuit tossed.
Alba, 61, was thrust into the spotlight in July 2022 when customer Austin Simon angrily confronted him and pulled him up by the collar, demanding an apology after the clerk denied Simon’s girlfriend chips for her daughter.
The clerk grabbed a knife and killed Smith, 35, and was put in jail on a second-degree murder charge that was later dropped following an outpouring of support, including from Mayor Adams who declared “this hard-working New Yorker was doing his job, and someone aggressively went behind the counter to attack him.”
He filed his lawsuit in September, seeking unspecified damages.
The city is claiming video evidence of the bloody fight, along with testimony from witnesses, including Simon’s girlfriend, Tina Lee, gave police enough reason to arrest the clerk, and for prosecutors to initially pursue their case.
“The undisputed facts show that after the plaintiff’s arrest, there was even more evidence to support a finding of probable cause for his prosecution,” city lawyers wrote legal papers filed Friday, pushing for the case to be thrown out.
Alba’s lawyer, Richard Cardinale, blasted the city’s arguments for dismissing the suit saying the city’s latest legal papers “flies in the face of Mayor Adams’ statement that he was an innocent hard-working New Yorker trying to defend himself … [and] is stunning,” he said.
A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department doubled down, insisting “there was sufficient probable cause to arrest and prosecute Mr. Alba.”